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It seems like a lot of people do not make it to the end of this essay. Any time it comes up people invariably go, "Yeah, so that is why we should institute a hi

by kqr 2y ago

It seems like a lot of people do not make it to the end of this essay. Any time it comes up people invariably go, "Yeah, so that is why we should institute a hierarchy" which is not at all what Freeman was saying. > Once the movement no longer clings tenaciously to the ideology of "structurelessness," it is free to develop those forms of organization best suited to its healthy functioning. This does not mean that we should go to the other extreme and blindly imitate the traditional forms of organization. She mentions some concrete ideas: - Leaders do not select their teams, instead, teams select their spokesperson. A spokesperson does not have authority over the team but can make decisions on their behalf in conversation with other spokespeople. - Rotating the role of spokesperson among the eligible of the team. Possibly even having multiple spokespeople on the same team for different types of decisions. - Set up processes to ensure someone does not sit on important information others do not have access to. All data should be public in the group. - etc. This is far from instituting an explicit hierarchy!

baxtr 2y ago
Thanks for surfacing her ideas. Although I have to admit that these sound all like ideas that sound great "in theory" but don’t work in reality. At least I’m not aware of good examples.
- scarecrowbob 2y ago
  Oh, I dunno- my experience is that in "reality" almost every group of folks I have worked with, from software teams to stage hands to bands has (when functioning well) been more or less organized around those kinds of ideas. It may sound hyperbolic to say that "anarchism is the default way humans work together". At the same every production I have worked in may have a boss, but at the same time usually the folks actually doing the work are getting along with very little direct hierarchy- people who know what to do go do it, folks who don't get tasked with doing things. Most folks have watched stuff really get into the weeds when every action needs to be dictated from above.
- atq2119 2y ago
  It is common in universities in at least some parts of the world for the dean(s) of departments to rotate among the faculty. That seems to align somewhat with those ideas.
- pseudalopex 2y ago
  Teams selecting someone to speak for them is voters selecting a representative. Different representatives for different committees isn't unusual. A rotating representative is similar to a rotating president or sortition.
marxisttemp 2y ago
What you’re describing sounds a lot like syndicalism, which is an idea that many people interested in structure without hierarchy end up at! Including Noam Chomsky[0], who is perhaps better known here for his hierarchy (lol) of grammars. [0] https://chomsky.info/19760725/ https://chomsky.info/19760725/
abdullahkhalids 2y ago
Yes, anarchists think that the right set of social processes can allow for organizations that don't have abusive hierarchies. But these processes themselves are very structured and take a lot of careful work. This is so far from popular understanding of anarchism.
- duxup 2y ago
  There was an interesting story someone wrote about their time with some anarchists who traveled to New Orleans to help in the wake of the hurricane to help. The had a house and kitchen and in addition to traveling around and helping on an individual basis they planned to provide free meals to the locals. They ran into the problem where one group of volunteers that aligned to cook together were vegan and insisted on making only vegan food (it also sounded like the dishes were very strange to the locals). This made sense for the cooks, but the locals didn't want the food. But nobody could convince this group to do anything differently. Their system resulted in a sort of rotating hierarchy that meant every few days they couldn't provide for the locals. Functional anarchy seems like it takes a lot of work.
  - JackMorgan 2y ago
    Imagine being homeless from a hurricane yet still so privileged you can turn your nose up at a free vegan meal! Guess they didn't really need the meal after all... I feel like this is more a commentary on the "needy" folks. No one goes into a soup kitchen and expects to get their favorite meal, but I guess these folks were expecting the vegans to give up their beliefs and cook them hamburgers.
    - duxup 2y ago
      The people who they were helping weren't starving on the streets, I don't know what you imagine the aftermath of in New Orleans was like, but it wasn't that. There's a strange cruelty to your comment where you're thinking of homeless people who went through a natural disaster ... so you can call them 'privileged'.
yamrzou 2y ago
It seems that those ideas are mainly optimizing for making sure that the group of people in positions of authority will be diffuse, flexible, open, and temporary, or what she calls "democratic structuring" in the essay. If one wants a default, well-tested structure, hierarchy seems to be a good candidate[1]. Another idea is to optimize for viability, meaning the ability to adapt to and survive changes in the environment, described by the Viable System Model[2]. I wonder if there are studies on the different ways of structuring and their goals and tradeoffs. [1] Choose Boring Culture — https://charity.wtf/2023/05/01/choose-boring-technology-culture/ https://charity.wtf/2023/05/01/choose-boring-technology-cult... [2] Tools for Viable Organizing — https://vsru.org/articles/tools-for-viable-organizing.html https://vsru.org/articles/tools-for-viable-organizing.html
- PaulDavisThe1st 2y ago
  "Heirarchy" describes a set of power and/or decision-making and/or accountability relationships. It does not describe how the individuals who hold particular positions within the heirachy may change over time, which is a central part of the ideas Joreen gets to in the latter part of the essay. Or in click-bait terms: you can have heirarchy without heirarchy :)
nabla9 2y ago
The basics of representative democracy with different words.
Aunche 2y ago
A traditional hierarchy is a tree, whereas a flat governance aims to be as close as possible to a connected graph. It's significantly easier to maintain a tree than a connected graph, especially with a sufficient group size. You're unlikely to find many people willing to invest so much effort into maintaining a flat organization, and even if you do, often times it's a better investment for those people to be actively making progress on that shared goal rather than governance. IMO, a regular representative democracy is "good enough." It may be biased towards the elite, but it's still by far the most successful form of governance when it comes to creating large systemic change. The perceived ineffectiveness of it comes from people's unwillingness to put actual work, which applies to any other form of organization as well.
- mordae 2y ago
  No, it's not. It heavily favors the elite to the point it ended up like it is today all over the world - halfway to plutocracy with a touch of oligarchy.
  - Aunche 2y ago
    What people consider oligarchy is actually allowing the outsourcing of governance to the elite. Corporations are disproportionately represented because they are the ones who do the most research and strategizing. The high profile victories of the post WWII era (e.g. Civil Rights, the Clean Air Act, OSHA) were achieved by grassroots groups dedicating themselves to similar levels of effort. On the other hand, modern day advocacy and political engagement prioritizes entertainment and memeyness. Even today, people achieve victories over the elite when they take civic engagement seriously like NIMBYs blocking billionaire developers.
watwut 2y ago
> Leaders do not select their teams, instead, teams select their spokesperson. A spokesperson does not have authority over the team but can make decisions on their behalf in conversation with other spokespeople. I have seen this and result is that no one wants to be the spokesperson except really really aggressive people able to bully others into compliance. Because the "spokeperson" gets to experience all the negative consequences of the decisions without having the authority to do anything about it. They are effectively secretaries. Most people, including good leaders, nope out.
MarkPNeyer 2y ago
“Teams selecting leaders” or “randomly choosing the spokesperson” still gives rise to an explicit hierarchy, but in this case it’s not permanent and there’s a mechanism that prevents it from becoming permanent. The idea that you can avoid hierarchy is, I think, confusing “social hierarchies with permanent places” - yes, bad, avoid that - with the _concept_ of hierarchy at all.
- red_admiral 2y ago
  Yes, it's the time of year (olympiad?) when we remind ourselves that elections push power upward, then the elected push it downward.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

by kqr 2y ago

baxtr 2y ago

Thanks for surfacing her ideas. Although I have to admit that these sound all like ideas that sound great "in theory" but don’t work in reality. At least I’m not aware of good examples.

scarecrowbob 2y ago
Oh, I dunno- my experience is that in "reality" almost every group of folks I have worked with, from software teams to stage hands to bands has (when functioning well) been more or less organized around those kinds of ideas. It may sound hyperbolic to say that "anarchism is the default way humans work together". At the same every production I have worked in may have a boss, but at the same time usually the folks actually doing the work are getting along with very little direct hierarchy- people who know what to do go do it, folks who don't get tasked with doing things. Most folks have watched stuff really get into the weeds when every action needs to be dictated from above.
atq2119 2y ago
It is common in universities in at least some parts of the world for the dean(s) of departments to rotate among the faculty. That seems to align somewhat with those ideas.
pseudalopex 2y ago
Teams selecting someone to speak for them is voters selecting a representative. Different representatives for different committees isn't unusual. A rotating representative is similar to a rotating president or sortition.

marxisttemp 2y ago

What you’re describing sounds a lot like syndicalism, which is an idea that many people interested in structure without hierarchy end up at! Including Noam Chomsky[0], who is perhaps better known here for his hierarchy (lol) of grammars. [0] https://chomsky.info/19760725/ https://chomsky.info/19760725/

abdullahkhalids 2y ago

Yes, anarchists think that the right set of social processes can allow for organizations that don't have abusive hierarchies. But these processes themselves are very structured and take a lot of careful work. This is so far from popular understanding of anarchism.

duxup 2y ago
There was an interesting story someone wrote about their time with some anarchists who traveled to New Orleans to help in the wake of the hurricane to help. The had a house and kitchen and in addition to traveling around and helping on an individual basis they planned to provide free meals to the locals. They ran into the problem where one group of volunteers that aligned to cook together were vegan and insisted on making only vegan food (it also sounded like the dishes were very strange to the locals). This made sense for the cooks, but the locals didn't want the food. But nobody could convince this group to do anything differently. Their system resulted in a sort of rotating hierarchy that meant every few days they couldn't provide for the locals. Functional anarchy seems like it takes a lot of work.
- JackMorgan 2y ago
  Imagine being homeless from a hurricane yet still so privileged you can turn your nose up at a free vegan meal! Guess they didn't really need the meal after all... I feel like this is more a commentary on the "needy" folks. No one goes into a soup kitchen and expects to get their favorite meal, but I guess these folks were expecting the vegans to give up their beliefs and cook them hamburgers.
  - duxup 2y ago
    The people who they were helping weren't starving on the streets, I don't know what you imagine the aftermath of in New Orleans was like, but it wasn't that. There's a strange cruelty to your comment where you're thinking of homeless people who went through a natural disaster ... so you can call them 'privileged'.

yamrzou 2y ago

It seems that those ideas are mainly optimizing for making sure that the group of people in positions of authority will be diffuse, flexible, open, and temporary, or what she calls "democratic structuring" in the essay. If one wants a default, well-tested structure, hierarchy seems to be a good candidate[1]. Another idea is to optimize for viability, meaning the ability to adapt to and survive changes in the environment, described by the Viable System Model[2]. I wonder if there are studies on the different ways of structuring and their goals and tradeoffs. [1] Choose Boring Culture — https://charity.wtf/2023/05/01/choose-boring-technology-culture/ https://charity.wtf/2023/05/01/choose-boring-technology-cult... [2] Tools for Viable Organizing — https://vsru.org/articles/tools-for-viable-organizing.html https://vsru.org/articles/tools-for-viable-organizing.html

PaulDavisThe1st 2y ago
"Heirarchy" describes a set of power and/or decision-making and/or accountability relationships. It does not describe how the individuals who hold particular positions within the heirachy may change over time, which is a central part of the ideas Joreen gets to in the latter part of the essay. Or in click-bait terms: you can have heirarchy without heirarchy :)

nabla9 2y ago

The basics of representative democracy with different words.

Aunche 2y ago

A traditional hierarchy is a tree, whereas a flat governance aims to be as close as possible to a connected graph. It's significantly easier to maintain a tree than a connected graph, especially with a sufficient group size. You're unlikely to find many people willing to invest so much effort into maintaining a flat organization, and even if you do, often times it's a better investment for those people to be actively making progress on that shared goal rather than governance. IMO, a regular representative democracy is "good enough." It may be biased towards the elite, but it's still by far the most successful form of governance when it comes to creating large systemic change. The perceived ineffectiveness of it comes from people's unwillingness to put actual work, which applies to any other form of organization as well.

mordae 2y ago
No, it's not. It heavily favors the elite to the point it ended up like it is today all over the world - halfway to plutocracy with a touch of oligarchy.
- Aunche 2y ago
  What people consider oligarchy is actually allowing the outsourcing of governance to the elite. Corporations are disproportionately represented because they are the ones who do the most research and strategizing. The high profile victories of the post WWII era (e.g. Civil Rights, the Clean Air Act, OSHA) were achieved by grassroots groups dedicating themselves to similar levels of effort. On the other hand, modern day advocacy and political engagement prioritizes entertainment and memeyness. Even today, people achieve victories over the elite when they take civic engagement seriously like NIMBYs blocking billionaire developers.

watwut 2y ago

> Leaders do not select their teams, instead, teams select their spokesperson. A spokesperson does not have authority over the team but can make decisions on their behalf in conversation with other spokespeople. I have seen this and result is that no one wants to be the spokesperson except really really aggressive people able to bully others into compliance. Because the "spokeperson" gets to experience all the negative consequences of the decisions without having the authority to do anything about it. They are effectively secretaries. Most people, including good leaders, nope out.

MarkPNeyer 2y ago

“Teams selecting leaders” or “randomly choosing the spokesperson” still gives rise to an explicit hierarchy, but in this case it’s not permanent and there’s a mechanism that prevents it from becoming permanent. The idea that you can avoid hierarchy is, I think, confusing “social hierarchies with permanent places” - yes, bad, avoid that - with the _concept_ of hierarchy at all.

red_admiral 2y ago
Yes, it's the time of year (olympiad?) when we remind ourselves that elections push power upward, then the elected push it downward.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]